Category: anti-oppression

This Sunday the Community of Mary Magdalene in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania will celebrate (via Zoom) the gifts of this amazing benefactor/saint to our lives with a mass with readings from the lost apocryphal text, Gospel of Mary. At the end of Mass, we will have the pleasure of honoring Dr. Shannen Dee Williams with the…
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“All men are created equal.” Is there one among us who has not wished that this had been stated in another, more inclusive way? That the whole American project could have been based on a different premise? While we celebrate the progress we have made, we are conscious of how much more we want to…
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Does this scene seem familiar? Marie (not her real name), a white woman sitting close enough to touch me, reached out, took my arm and said to me, “Inez, when I see you, I do not see color. I just see your beautiful soul.” Crash! My face must have shown what I was feeling, because…
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Will the powers that be pay attention to Daniel Horan’s column this week in NCR?  The sentences that make me most want to cheer are these: “it is demonstrably clear that those who invoke ‘gender ideology’ generally don’t know what they are talking about. Such folks would do well to listen to leading scholars on the subjects…
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I had never heard the phrase “opportunity hoarding” before, and I had no idea that I had been, and maybe still am, doing just that. Oh, when I first heard the phrase, I could easily see how the Church hierarchy had definitely been hoarding opportunities – forever – and grew rather self-righteous and puffed up…
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The Supreme Court decision affirming that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation isn’t getting the notice it deserves. Think of this like the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in that it defines another fundamental right, one that many LGBTQ persons have been denied, often in Catholic institutions. However, the…
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I am trying to do the “homework on white privilege” that so many African-American leaders, writers, clergy, activists, citizens are advocating. I had done some of the work before as part of our parish’s racial healing initiative which had us reading the literature, meeting weekly in small racial healing groups, and trying to learn, grow,…
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“A worthless statement” is how Franciscan theologian Daniel Horan characterizes the 2018 Bishops’ pastoral “against racism.” Immediately, a pang of guilt; in this blog I said it was “pretty good.” I also called on the bishops to defend it in the public sphere as vigorously as they defended some other pro-life issues, and on parishes…
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If you are a homeowner in Great Britain, you are entitled to live under the English Common Law Principle of “Ancient Lights”, i.e. you have the “right to unobstructed passage of light and air from adjoining land if you have had uninterrupted use of the lights for twenty years.” The Irish author, John Banville, put…
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